In this text, I want to explore how ‘queerness’ is a tool to widen what the ‘default’ or normative state of being is. What is considered to be ‘normative’ is constructed by encasing what is accepted and ‘correct’ within a border. Boundaries are thus created between what is normative – and is accepted and recognized as such and everything else, which becomes ‘othered’. With the suffix, ‘-ness’, queerness becomes a: state: condition: quality. Queerness implies the state of being queer. Below are short summations of each chapter from my thesis text. *The boundary and the border. As a first chapter, I want to begin by defining the words Boundary and Border to illustrate the difference between them. Boundary: /ˈbaʊnd(ə)ri/ A line which marks the limits of an area; a dividing line. Border: /ˈbɔːdə/ A line separating two countries, administrative divisions, or other areas. *Queerness surrounding Boundaries and Borders I have to stress that for myself, queerness is not about referencing a sexual orientation. It is a state of being occupied by ‘The Other’. There’s nothing strange or “special” about lesbians, gays, transsexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, transvestites, immigrants, asylum seekers etc. except for the fact that in a vast majority of countries, they’re illegal/persecuted/othered for the state of being they occupy. *Boundaries and the act of taking In Hindi, the action of taking a photograph is called "foto keechna", keechna meaning ‘to take’. In both the Hindi and English language, the action involved with photography is "taking" to procure something that’s out of your possession, into it. To ‘take’, implies "to want". I need to want something in my possession in order to justify taking it. I’m interested in the dynamics of pointing a camera at someone’s face. Photography has made possible a visual archive of history. But this visual history is a limited one, outlined by privileges of where you lived in the world, those of whom had access to a camera, could afford film and its processing, and who could define the narrative of the image to contextualize it. Representation through images, though making a case for itself as ‘all-revealing’ in fact shows us as much as it hides. The act of taking with photography turns the image into an object for representation. And in a positive sense as much as photography is intertwined in the act of ‘taking’ it doesn’t measure to how actually taking a physical object consorts to stealing. As an object, it shows us a certain side of life, depending on from where one is standing. It allows not for stealing, nor for an ultimate truth or a perfect example, but for artistic interpretation for what one was seeing. There’s a lot of value in that as a form of expression. However, just like the medium of film, the image is sensitive. Being vulnerable, an image considered as object is susceptible to being abused and misunderstood. I consider how an Indian female photographer subverts and challenges traditional notions of “femaleness” with a brazen photographs of colonial India. * Photographs and vulnerability In so much as taking a photograph can reveal elements of the person who takes the image and the subject/object in the image, it also carries within it a sort of vulnerability. Once an image is set in film, it’s subject to multiple interpretations, whether right or wrong. Photographs carry a lot of space for assumptions. In relation to my own work, this is why I make moving image of the images I’ve made. It is to ensconce them in a narrative, to loosely wrap them in something soft. To take care of them. For lack of a better word, I would say to “protect them”. To build something around them, an easy word to turn too would be: ‘community’. But community comes riddled with its own set of biases, roles. Both the words ‘protect’ and ‘community’ are big terms, that lack the space for nuance as they are filled with predefined notions. To ‘protect’ is a patriarchal construct, it assumes that those that need to be protected are weaker than those that need to do the protecting. With the video work I make, a space is created whereby having the images weave in and out and flit loosely to a narrative, they can be ensconced by my phenomenological gaze, that holds them. Off course there’s also the flip side of the argument, whereby ‘to hold’ can also imply containment. Contain; to keep within limits, to have within, to restrain oneself What comes to mind is a walled structure that boxes in. inherently a ‘protective’ act. But going back to the act of holding, I want to propose that it is an everchanging phenomenon. Where to contain doesn’t imply containment but containing, used in plural to imply liability to change, vulnerability to offer new scope. I believe that the images in my work are held in a space and this space creates a sort of ‘home’. I think of these images as objects in a diasporic home. Where, as Sara Ahmed has expounded, objects gather as lines of connection to spaces that are lived as homes but are no longer inhabited. Objects come to embody such lost homes. The concept of a ‘home’ is a domestic one, it offers multiple combinations of past, present and future. It reflects boundaries that are constantly changing, by the adding or subtracting of objects and elements, allowing diverse opportunities for queerness to surface. ‘Home’ in another sense offers one to go back too, to remember, to be reminded, to go back to the cause of why you strayed away from the past. It offers a past that transforms into a present that is ever changing. *Community, Protection and Privilege I grew up within and alongside the city of Dubai. In 25 years, it went from a desert to becoming an epitome for what the western world and neo-colonized nations refer to as-“development”. The frenzied neoliberalism, open trade laws and dismal worker rights birthed the shiny, cutting edge city as it is known today. It brought us the world’s tallest tower, a ski center parked in the middle of a mall, excessively luxurious living experiences, all heavily complimented with a side of exclusion, systematic racism, patriarchal control and masochism. Served on the backs of the masses of workers who migrated from southeast Asia to serve the main benefactors, Emirati’s. Who can be Emirati and those whom can claim over Emirati citizenship is confined to those whose ancestors lived in its seven constituting Emirates before 1925. In the U.A.E there is no system of naturalization or permanent residency. ‘One of the most striking aspects is that although majority of the country is highly exploited, there is ethnic, religious and industrial peace – surprising because a majority of migrant workers hail from societies with long and often endemic histories of ethnic, religious and industrial conflicts. Because foreign workers lack residency rights, the fear of deportation is the major mechanism enforcing ethnic and religious tolerance and industrial peace.’ When I think of Dubai, the first thing that comes to mind about the city, is its malls. Malls were where you went and what you did for ‘recreation’. I go back to these malls, and remember how I was never be lost in them because of the way they were designed and how that oriented the individual. The malls were built up into different levels, and each level replicated the previous, like a donut shaped circle. Here you could peer over the railings at any point and peep at the level you just escalated up from. From the point of view of being ‘protected’ you could never be ‘lost’. If you started at one point and walked straight, you would probably end up where you left off. Or even if this wasn’t the case, the Gucci, Fendi and H&M served as points of navigation. In this way, the world of the mall, reflected the world of the city, where one was trapped in the bubble, where your voice, the voice of the community and the latest Katy Perry song echoed in unison off the shiny tiles and bright white lights. *Peaceful oppression. This state of being is a state of multiple desperations. You live with your feet in one direction, your hands pointing elsewhere, and your head split, living in different worlds. You work hard and keep your head down, because even though entrenched in this exploitative system and “othered”, there are privileges to be reaped, it’s better than things back “home”, being treated as a second class citizen is for the economic benefit and privilege of being able to live in the ‘first world’. You make space for experiences of exploitation in the small world of making and saving money. Indianness has touched my life even when not growing up in India. I think about how I grew up in a bubble of clean roads, English medium education and skyscrapers but was constantly confronted with my ‘place’ in society and what I was and was not permitted to do. Where begging and being homeless were punishable by law, but could conjure up memories of families in tattered clothes in my mind’s eye when cruising the perfectly paved streets. Where poverty was hidden and pushed to outskirts, when yet it was the dark Southeast Asian men who toiled to build the skyscrapers in the sweltering 45-degree heat. Where rice came in plastic packages labelled "perfumed, best quality basmati", but longed to see the soft swaying of the green rice fields while dark brown women waded through the tall grass. It's a weird position To be privileged and to know poverty. India is the second most populated country in the world at 1.37 billion spanning a land area of 3.287 million km². To put that in some context, Europe is a continent that spans 10.18 million km2 and has a population of 749 MILLION. In the densely populated conundrum that is India, I was born in the tiny state of Goa (as you can see on the map above). Because of Portugal’s colonization of the state of Goa spanning from 1560 to 1963, I’ve recently been able to acquire a nationality/ an identity card that is Portuguese. Growing up with the Portuguese language, Indo-Portuguese food, music, it didn’t seem foreign. What did and still does feel like a double whammy of being strange and wrong is that a plastic identity card now grants me new privileges: the benefits of free and unrestricted travel to most parts of the world, a better quality of life and freedom to be openly queer. In order to expound on the weirdness of the situation further, my own sister can’t visit me in the Netherlands because still having an Indian passport and needing a tourist visa, her application was denied two times on grounds on “not having sufficient reason to visit.” *Borrowed language, borrowed life. I've never been comfortable in English, but then again, I've never known any other tongue. Growing up with a smattering of Hindi, Portuguese, Konkani. And all I know is the language of one of my colonizers. The language of privilege. The language that positions me as knowing better than you only for the formation of the letters into words into phrases on my tongue. The words that my tongue knows are ones of privilege. The words that I form into the sentences spell out privilege because I do not know what it is to sleep on an earthen floor. I do not know what it is to shower with cold water in an outhouse ensconced in darkness. I do not know what it is to beg on the streets and have the words "khana" form on my lips. The words roll in my mouth, Economics has taught me that I am from the third world What does it make the little boy, barefoot and in tattered clothing selling roses on the side of the street? A 4th, 5th world? Or world 0. Because that's the exact number of fucks given about him in this system of living.